Plumber in Long Beach, NYEmergency Plumbing, Flood Repairs, Drains & Water Heaters

A dense city, not a suburb.

Long Beach became a village in 1913 and a city in 1922, separating it from the Town of Hempstead, according to Wikipedia's city history. The Census Bureau's latest five-year survey counts about 16,600 homes. Only 38% are single-family detached. 20% are two-family houses and 39% are in buildings with five or more units, including 24% in buildings of 50 or more. 23% were built before 1940, and the median year built is 1961. 66% are owner-occupied.

That mix shapes the plumbing. West End bungalows sit close together on narrow streets. Apartment and condo buildings along the boardwalk share drain stacks, so a clog or leak in one unit can reach the units below. We find the actual source before we replace anything.

Gas and electric, very little oil.

The ACS shows 70% of Long Beach homes heat with utility gas, 17% with electricity and just 9% with fuel oil, the lowest oil share of any town page in this series.

Sandy hit almost everything.

Sandy struck on October 29, 2012. A state-funded NYSERDA microgrid study for the city says nearly all of Long Beach's housing was damaged. Sandy damaged sewer and water lines, wells and pump stations; the Water Pollution Control Plant was out of service for 7 days and the Water Purification Plant was shut down for about 2 weeks. The same study notes that almost the entire city lies in a FEMA Special Flood Hazard Area. The rebuilt 2.2-mile boardwalk fully reopened in October 2013. If your water heater, boiler or gas appliances sat in floodwater, have them checked before you relight them. A backwater (sewer check) valve on the house sewer line closes if the sewer backs up, so sewage can't flow in through low drains. We install them; in Long Beach, like all plumbing, it needs a city permit and a city-licensed plumber.

Your water: the City of Long Beach Water Department.

The city pumps its own water from seven wells in the Lloyd aquifer (its sole source), and serves about 35,000 people. Its 2025 water report says the Park Place treatment plant aerates the water to convert iron, adds alum, settles and filters the iron out, and adds lime to raise pH and reduce lead and copper leaching from household plumbing. The water is soft: total hardness ran 5.0 to 31.6 mg/L. The city says no lead service lines have been identified to date. All residential meters are scheduled to be smart meters by the end of 2026.

Sewer: the city's own plant, now being tied to Bay Park.

Long Beach treats its own sewage at the Water Pollution Control Plant at 2 West Pine Street. Under the Long Beach Consolidation Project, Nassau County and the city are converting that plant into a fortified pump station and building a force main under the bay to the county's South Shore Water Reclamation Facility (formerly Bay Park). For a sewer problem in the street, call the city. For the line from your house to the street, call us.

Permits and licensing: the city, not the town.

All plumbing in Long Beach needs a city Building Department permit, and the city's definition of plumbing includes gas pipes and gas-burning equipment. All plumbing work must be done by a City of Long Beach licensed plumber; homeowners can't do their own. A city license requires a master plumber's license from a Nassau County Tri-Town Agreement member, $500,000 liability insurance and an appearance before the city's plumbing board, and the licensed plumber must own 51% of an applying company.